Why is Barnes & Noble So Afraid Of My Blog?

I wrote a post late last Friday night in response to an insulting email from B&N. I was a little ticked that B&N could be so obnoxious, but I was also pleased to discover how I could make them squirm.

You see, B&N's marketing dept wouldn't invite me to the Nook launch event last Thursday because they don't like how I have been finding and reporting on stories that either embarrass them or leak details that they'd prefer to keep hidden. To put it simply, I'm too good at my job.

Today I learned that not only did B&N ban me from press events, they are so annoyed with my coverage that they decided to block me on their internal network.

Seriously, B&N corporate won't let their store employees visit my blog from store computers. Store staff can visit Engadget, Gizmodo, and pretty much every other blog on the web - just not mine.

I know that is hard to believe, and in fact I didn't believe it either. But it's true and I have a couple photos to prove it. I have a number of B&N contacts at the store level, and one of the ones from NYC passed these photos along to me. The first shows the blog of my competition, and the second shows what happens when a B&N employee tries to visit my blog.

I don't know about you, but I find this deeply amusing. I am one blogger, with one small ebook gadget blog, and I have managed to make them squirm. This implies that I have a level of influence much higher than I'd ever considered. While I have seen Amazon and Apple act in ways that suggest someone is reading my blog, I've never had proof quite this explicit before.

You know, for the longest time I've cherished a dream of one day being as influential (in my own small way) as, for example, James Kendrick. Thanks to B&N I now know that this isn't a dream but an achievable goal.

P.S. If anyone at Barnes & Noble is reading this and wants to make peace, you know where to find me. Even though I enjoy a good confrontational relationship, it's not the most productive way to interact.

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Nate Hoffelder

Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader: He's here to chew bubble gum and fix broken websites, and he is all out of bubble gum. He has been blogging about indie authors since 2010 while learning new tech skills at the drop of a hat. He fixes author sites, and shares what he learns on The Digital Reader's blog. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group.

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28 Comments

Not to burst your bubble, but is it possible they blocked your hosting company? Your blog is blocked at my office, and we are definitely not a B&N. But you, birthdayshoes.com, and a few other of my fave blogs are inexplicably blocked. Usually that’s because they did a blanket block of everyone from a certain web host. For a while blogspot was blocked, then it wasnt. Then WordPress.org stuff was blocked…it was weird.

So if they use the same filters it’s possible you got caught in the net.

That is an interesting theory. Nate, can you ask your contact to attempt to contact stats.hornet.arvixe.com (which also hosts your site)? While it’s still possible they blocked you, it would at least be interesting to know whether they blocked you, specifically, or your host.

I get what you are saying, but IT systems and the software solutions used can be widely varied and differ from site to site and even within directorate within an organization. In my previous job I saw a wide array of these sorts of issues, where one equipment vendor I worked with kept ending up blocked if I switched groups or whenever a new corporate initiative came through … and in my current position I hae seen sites go blocked & unblocked too often.

Other explanations might be *possible* but what is most *likely*, given B&N’s past record of throwing tantrums at the slightest provocation, is that they have blacklisted Nate. Their management has proven itself over the last year to be self-destructively thin-skinned so this is just another example of how insecure those folks feel.

The DC Comics thing, for one. They made a big show of pulling the graphic novels off the shelves over a timed exclusive for Amazon, as if *they* haven’t been signing up exclusives of the own. And not just timed ones, either.

Stupid, counterproductive hysterical decision = tantrum. Picking a fight with Time Warner over a trivial marketing move is not a reasoned strategic move. But if that is how *they* think business is carried out… (shrug)

What if they were blocking you, because they are afraid of you? If I was a Junior High School Hall Monitor^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^ Proxy Manager having you especially under my gimlet eye, and I found out you were being fed information like this from one a mole under my jurisdiction I would be checking my logs right now for someone who had gone out to the-digital-reader.com, then ebookreader.com, then the-digital-reader.com again, today before 2pm. I would log the machine names; that would be about 1 to 10 machines. Afterwards I’d check with the managers to see who had books behind the desks that matched the reflection in the photo you generously provided. Let’s see that would be something by Ernest Hemingway, A Tree Grows in Brooklin, and To Kill A Mockingbird if I read it right. That might isolate my witch hunt to a single Benedict Arnold, or two at most. Then I’d contact HR.

Looks more like a poster now that I study it; and that would make it much more generic and harder to trace. And it’s nice to see your photos don’t have any metadata in them. I was just kidding anyway. Most proxy managers that I know of can’t read so we’re safe here from his prying eyes. Assuming “he” exists.

If it’s any consolation, I didn’t notice this at first. Then I got to to thinking – what was the source then? My initial thought was that it was some sort of screen “burn-in”, but I wasn’t happy with this explanation since it didn’t appear to extend outwith that top area. Now I’m thinking that it’s simply a graphical effect, like a texture, in the background of that banner area.

Not sure if this is related or not, but over on linkedin, Barnes and Noble’s company feed shows they hired a new Sr. Facilities/Security Coordinator 12 days ago, and also put up a listing for a Senior Security Administrator: